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[VideonRedux]

Hi, just bought a DCS-2132L off of ebay. It was used, even had a card still in it with a bunch of video clips. I formatted the card and tried setting this up to monitor my cats food bowl, as there seems to be a couple other neighborhood cats coming in through the cat door to raid the kibble! Unfortunately I just cant get any results using the onboard memory card. If I leave the computer running, I can use a third party video recording software to capture clips. The camera is the older hardware version 'A' with the version 1.02 firmware. I use a computer that never goes on the net, running XP. I'm not interested in any of the cloud features and I do not want to log into this camera from anywhere else. But I really would like to use the camera without the computer running! This is why I bought a camera with an onboard cardslot in the first place! So maybe there's something I don't understand about setting the camera up for onboard recording? The firmware is not very intuitive, the interface has a pan/tilt control which has nothing to do with this camera, so it appears to be a 'one size fits all' firmware! The recordings can't be viewed on the camera unless I go to a setup tab, which seems awkward. Maybe I'm expected to use a card reader on the computer and that's why the onboard firmware hasn't really been designed for looking at what's been recorded? But no matter because the camera just wont record! And I'm having problems with Adobe Flash. I can't update the computer, so maybe the browser wont allow the camera to make changes? I'm thinking maybe I should've bought a game camera. Those can be used indoors as well as out in the rain, will run even if the power goes out and don't have all sorts of funny issues with Flash, codecs, drivers or any of that!

[FurryNutz]

Link>Welcome!

• What Hardware version is your camera? Look at sticker under the camera case.
• Link>What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the cameras web page under status.
• What region are you located?

Maybe try a factory reset, reload the FW file using IE or FF while LAN wired to the camera, then factory reset the camera then set it up from scratch?

[VideonRedux]

Sorry for the delay, I was expecting email notifications from here, but finally decided to just log in and see for myself. Too many other projects!  Not sure what you mean by the router case, but I'll assume you mean the camera case?

There's another sticker on the bottom with a message that the camera complies with canadian ICES-003, I'm in the USA. So maybe I ought to try the global firmware? I've read somewhere on this forum that there's some funny issues with different regions. I didn't think of that until just now, but maybe this camera is not a USA camera?

The firmware was 1.02 and I tried loading 1.01. First thing I did, the very first time I had power on this was hold the reset button until I got some kind of reaction. Hadn't even read the manual on what to expect while using the reset button. I didn't feel like dinking around with someone elses custom settings getting in my way. Keep in mind I bought this used off of ebay.

I'll try a different region for the firmware, maybe that'll make a difference?

Link>Welcome!

• What Hardware version is your camera? Look at sticker under the router case.
• Link>What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the cameras web page under status.
• What region are you located?

Maybe try a factory reset, reload the FW file using IE or FF while LAN wired to the camera, then factory reset the camera then set it up from scratch?

[RYAT3]

Have you tried a new sd card?  I've had 4 Sandisk cards go bad and won't record. Can't format them anywhere or fix them.

Your PTZ is a digital ptz. If you set the image on zoom you can pan to different areas of the zoom.

[FurryNutz]

It's best to use FW from with in your region. Sometimes you an use Canada FWs as they are in the same region however they still do there own stuff aside from USA.

Sorry for the delay, I was expecting email notifications from here, but finally decided to just log in and see for myself. Too many other projects!  Not sure what you mean by the router case, but I'll assume you mean the camera case?

There's another sticker on the bottom with a message that the camera complies with canadian ICES-003, I'm in the USA. So maybe I ought to try the global firmware? I've read somewhere on this forum that there's some funny issues with different regions. I didn't think of that until just now, but maybe this camera is not a USA camera?

The firmware was 1.02 and I tried loading 1.01. First thing I did, the very first time I had power on this was hold the reset button until I got some kind of reaction. Hadn't even read the manual on what to expect while using the reset button. I didn't feel like dinking around with someone elses custom settings getting in my way. Keep in mind I bought this used off of ebay.

I'll try a different region for the firmware, maybe that'll make a difference?

Link>Welcome!

• What Hardware version is your camera? Look at sticker under the router case.
• Link>What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the cameras web page under status.
• What region are you located?

Maybe try a factory reset, reload the FW file using IE or FF while LAN wired to the camera, then factory reset the camera then set it up from scratch?

[VideonRedux]

Have you tried a new sd card?  I've had 4 Sandisk cards go bad and won't record. Can't format them anywhere or fix them.

Your PTZ is a digital ptz. If you set the image on zoom you can pan to different areas of the zoom.

Digital PTZ, guess that makes sense. Be nice if I could use that while reviewing recorded video or images on the SD card.

I just now tried a different card. The one that came with the camera was a HP 16 gig, I pulled a Sandisk 8 gig out of a phone I'm not currently using. Used the camera GUI to format the card. Still no luck, but I did happen to look at the server settings in the event setup page, saw that there's an option to send media to the SD card that wasn't checked. Too bad that wasn't the problem! The server setup has a test option. I tried that and the card now has a txt file that says the test was good.

Then I looked at the event page and decided to try out the DO setup using a DMM set to diode/beep mode. The DMM beeps if the event is set to IR sensor and I wave my hand across the camera. But if I set the event to video motion, nothing happens.

I looked at the motion detection, it's enabled, sensitivity set to 90% with the amount set to 1%. Funny thing here is that the hints on the sidebar state that I should draw a detection region, but I can't draw anything on that preview image. Looks like something else not working right! Maybe if there's no region drawn, the motion detection fails to work? I would've assumed that if you don't draw anything, then it should automatically default to using the entire frame.

I really wish this firmware was open source, it's got all kinds of strange ideas patched together like a committee of desk jockeys had been put in charge. I use Blue Iris on my PC to do video motion recording off of all my cameras, and that also works perfectly with this camera. Blue Iris is designed & laid out in a way that makes a lot more sense to me. Really would like to find a way to replace the camera firmware and replace it with Blue Iris. Just need a windows shell like windows pre-install environment, right?

[VideonRedux]

Ok, got some kind of recording action, but it's buggy as hell!

I re-installed firmware 1.02.00 USA, noted that no previous settings were altered but now the event page has a action that wasn't there before. Called 'SD Card' which I assume actually meant 'Record to SD Card'

Setting the event to IR sensor and the media as snapshot, I get images being recorded to the card which is nice and maybe I'll just live with a crippled camera and leave it on IR only?

If I set the event to video motion, nothing. If I change the 'Percentage' to zero instead of one, and leave the sensitivity at 90%, then the DO kicks on and wont shut down and the card begins to receive a non-stop stream of useless images. So it records to the card at least!

If I turn the sensitivity down to 1% the DO makes my DMM beep once a second and I continue getting a stream of images I do not need. If I change the 'Percentage' to one, then everything dies and it wont record no matter what. Even with sensitivity set to 100% Having to go to a handful of separate setting pages to make changes is not helping at all.

And how are you supposed to select an area of the frame to monitor for motion? I can't figure out how to 'draw' a selection. Left-clicking over the pre-view image does nothing. Right-clicking only brings up a browser menu that has nothing to do with the camera. The live view page has the same result.

[RYAT3]

Ok, got some kind of recording action, 
And how are you supposed to select an area of the frame to monitor for motion? I can't figure out how to 'draw' a selection. Left-clicking over the pre-view image does nothing. Right-clicking only brings up a browser menu that has nothing to do with the camera. The live view page has the same result.

Use Internet Explorer. Other browsers do not work. 

[VideonRedux]

IE on my XP machine does not work. I think the activex components wont load or something like that. I get no video, just a blank screen for the live view area. So I moved the camera over to my Win 7 machine, IE still doesn't work but 5 or 6 updates later it works. All right, I can finally draw in the video area and now the camera is recording. I'm just going to draw the entire area and leave it that way, then see if I can make any further changes using FF. And there's other issues too, but likely from using an old OS that I wont connect out to the net anymore. I suppose somewhere on the stickies here I missed the basic walkthrough for setting up the camera? I didn't know I needed to set a server for example. But I appreciate the help, you must have a lot more patience than I do! Thanks!

Ok, got some kind of recording action, 
And how are you supposed to select an area of the frame to monitor for motion? I can't figure out how to 'draw' a selection. Left-clicking over the pre-view image does nothing. Right-clicking only brings up a browser menu that has nothing to do with the camera. The live view page has the same result.

Use Internet Explorer. Other browsers do not work. 

[VideonRedux]

All right, I think it's solved. But I must say this camera's firmware is very awkward, non-intuitive and crippled by default! I had to set a lot of different features in order to get some basic recording functionality and I would recommend a few minor changes.

There's a few help hints listed on the sidebar of the settings pages. It would be nice if those hints were rewritten to to state that recording will not function at all without doing everything first. I'm sure that to the Dlink technicians, it will be painfully obvious how to set the camera up, but it wasn't for me. I never make a habit of setting up Dlink cameras, so it's not obvious to me.

I would recommend that the default state of the firmware be configured to record to an onboard card if one is present, write that to work in a hot swapping manner where a card can be installed at any time while the camera is powered up.

The area of the frame to monitor should not be selected by drawing in blocks. It should be all of the frame except for masked off blocks. And if no blocks are selected, then the entire frame should be monitored by default. Every other make & model of security camera I have used always works like this. So that's why I didn't understand this one at first.